I weave my large tapestries on the Harrisville rug loom that my grandfather gave to me when he could no longer weave. And since I started working with James Koehler, I have used Harrisville yarns for my work. So getting a request to teach at Harrisville Designs this summer was quite exciting to me. I have an aunt who is also a weaver with a Harrisville rug loom (we're a looney loomy family) and she has taken a couple classes at Harrisville with great stories of lakes and old brick buildings and a studio full of sunshine. Now it is my turn to go there. I feel a little like I'm going home even though I've never been to Harrisville at all.
The class I'll be teaching is 5 days and will include the content from
my popular Color Gradation for Tapestry class. We will have a couple
extra days in this class to explore ways to use technique and color to
achieve the visual effects each student is interested in in tapestry. We will
explore uses of color on the loom as well as through slide presentations
and discussion. We will weave a sampler to practice these techniques
and all students will be able to weave a small tapestry or a study for a
larger work. I revel in teaching to a wide variety of experience levels
at once. As long as you know some very basic things about tapestry
weaving, you'll get along fine in this class. And if you're on your 50th
tapestry, come and weave with me also. There is always more to learn
for both of us. We will use the Knitting and Weaving Center's Harrisville floor looms. Unlike a lot of tapestry weavers, I most enjoy weaving on a floor loom, so this is a chance for me to convert some of my students to this way of doing tapestry. (Grin)
Harrisville Design classes are taught in an old spinning mill which has been
beautifully renovated. And of course what could be more gorgeous than
New Hampshire in August?
More information is available on the Harrisville Designs website HERE.
The specific class list is HERE.
And the link to my teaching page on my website is HERE with more information about this class and some good words from past students.
The class is August 5-9, 2013.
Mark your calendars!
Yarn waiting for tapestry weavers at the Michigan League of Handweaver's Conference in August 2012
I was able to swing by Mary Cost's new show at Downtown Subscription in Santa Fe, NM on the first day of its run, Tuesday the 5th.
I was sitting at a table, drinking an Izze soda (I had already had a chai tea latte that day at another coffee shop and couldn't go for a second round), and was delighted to watch a woman enthralled by the tapestries. She was holding her coffee (and frankly I was afraid she was going to spill it all over her shoes as she wasn't paying any attention to it), stumbling along between the tables and people looking up at the tapestries. People do find tapestry fascinating if we can just show it to them!
Morning, 55 x 33 inches
Note: This tapestry was hanging high on the wall thus the photograph makes it look narrower at the top. It is actually rectangular.
Mary also used to study with James Koehler. Her work has changed and grown significantly over just the last couple years. I think these recent architectural works are stunning and I hope she considers weaving something really large one of these days. I think it would be gorgeous.
Spring at last, 48.5 x 28.75 inches; Morning, 55 x 33 inches; Inside Looking Out, 38 x 27 inches
So Mary Cost is out there in Santa Fe making sure people see her tapestries. Lets go see them! Her work is beautiful and though the walls are not well-lit, the coffee shop is bright and you can see the work (if you can get by the people--the place was packed by the time I left!). She is represented by La Mesa of Santa Fe.
I have my piece for the Small Tapestry International 3: Outside the Line show sitting on the counter in my kitchen. I know this seems odd (after all, I am risking a ketchup malfunction by leaving it there), but I need to remember to rephotograph it and my memory has been failing me on a regular basis the last few weeks. Really I'm just taking things moment by moment at this point. The original photo I took was on the right track, but somehow I didn't get the entire piece in focus.
Cherry Lake is hung inside a larger frame and several times a day I walk by, see it out of the corner of my eye, and think, "who left that television there and what a waste of electricity?!" and then remember that (1) we have a TV but no reception, so it isn't really possible that that could be the blue glow from a TV and (2) that Emily would never have left that tapestry sitting there for a week. Since she is visiting our new niece in a land far away, I am left to fend for myself and for now, the tapestry stays in the kitchen.
I am attempting to learn more about photographing my own work. As a kid I had a Pentax K1000 single lens reflex camera. I got it for my 14th birthday and I loved it. I used it right up until that moment in Seattle in 2004 when I bought my first digital camera. I still keep the Pentax in my closet right next to my softball shoes. You never know when one of those will come in handy after excavation from the layer of dust. I wonder if the shoes still fit.
A couple years ago I bought a Canon digital SLR and have been amazed at what great photos it can take considering the hands of the person operating it. I do understand shutter and aperture and ISO (which used to be ASA in the world of film cameras, didn't it?) and depth of field. But I am no professional.
So today my task is to get a better photo of Cherry Lake. I have left it too late to take it to my professional photographer, so I am screwing up my patience and setting up the light stands and hoping that I can get this one done well myself. Here is the old photo (which was cropped for submission). I'll let you look for the new photo, which I am sure I am going to nail, in the STI3 catalog.
It has been two years now since I got a phone call on my way to Chaco Canyon that James Koehler had passed away. It seems like a lifetime ago, and like yesterday.
Harmonic Oscillation HOLXIII, James Koehler
I have been thinking about James and my time studying with him over the last few days. I learned many things from James, both positive and negative. I am sorry he is gone as there are still questions I would ask him. Here is the original post from shortly after his death: http://rebeccamezoff.blogspot.com/2011/03/james.html
The art of tapestry needed people like James.
Stay safe.
Take care of yourselves.
Keep weaving.
Honestly, I have been half crazed for the last few months. I have been working at the nursing home much more than I would really like and I have been trying to finish a monumental stack of projects... and sometimes a glass of wine just doesn't take away the tired from all that.
This week I finished that job at the nursing home. I have worked there for one year and fourteen days. It is a place where I have learned a lot about myself as a therapist and, as stressful situations are wont to do, I have located some communication issues in relationships with other people. It would probably be wise for me to blame them on my boss consider the source of those issues before starting another job.
The people who live there are stellar in so many ways. When I am twice the age I am now, I know I am going to be like Nancy. She broke her hip a few months ago. She lived alone in a little house that used to be a potters studio so her kitchen sink is 3 feet deep and her furniture is all 12 inches off the floor. She is a hippy-dippy lady who only eats organic food, does a lot of meditation, is still really strong, and looks a lot like Diane Keaton (so I fancy I am resembling her already). She is funny and socially appropriate and she is completely losing her memory. In fact, she really isn't safe to go home alone anymore. The little things are what get her. How to dial the phone. One minute she remembers, the next she can't do it and it COMPLETELY freaks her out. Then wait, oh yeah, she got it again. Whether the director of nursing who she just remembers as the "lady with the big ears" is mad at her because she didn't say hello when she passed her in the hall just now. Whether she ruined her surgery and has popped her new hip out of the socket because it sort of hurts more today than yesterday. And the anxiety circles and mounts and then she decompensates in to a little pile of Nancy-ness in the pink chair in the corner of her room. That is going to be me.
I know because I have these moments of anxiety and I'm only half her age. What if the vague but unrelenting stomach pain of the last week is really pancreatic cancer and I only have 3 months to live (if that turns out to be true I'm heading straight to Alaska for a bit of a vacation; but really it couldn't possibly be the stress of the job and the imminent changes; nope, must be cancer). What if the little yellow spots on the dishes ARE really mouse pee and not just some random water spray? What if that limp in the dog's right front leg means she won't wake up tomorrow morning and I'll have to figure out whether anyone can dig a hole to bury her when it is still this cold outside? See what I mean?
Nancy.
This was my last week of work there. I feel the anxiety of the work draining away as I sit at my ball winder preparing the balls and balls of yarn for my summer workshops and watching the sandhill cranes feeding in the barley fields across the street. The San Luis Valley is a place with huge skies, 14,000 foot peaks, and lots of wildlife. Some days I go outside to the honking of geese and cranes, see owls and hawks and bald eagles on my drive to work, smell the skunks outside (NOT inside!) my house, clean the carcasses out of the mousetraps (we gave up the live traps--sorry to the mice-lovers out there. It was just too much.), hear the coyotes howling at night around the sheep pens, and I think "lordy, I'm living in Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom." The bald openness of the place gives me pause and makes me stop and stand still. I need that. To stop the anxiety in its tracks by watching a flock of cranes fly spirals overhead in the updrafts. I will miss this place.
Fortunately I can come back and visit often. This little one will definitely make sure that I do.
There are some big changes coming in March and March is upon us. When they are all firmed up and I'm sure I won't be doing another U-turn, I'll let you know what they are! In the meantime, watch for those mouse-pee spots on your dishes just in case.
...is that it does something important for the maker.
Now, I am not necessarily saying that the baby blanket featured at the end of this post is art. I knitted it from a pattern and quite frankly, there were some mistakes along the way. But I think back in the first wave of feminism that fiber pursuits were discounted as something demeaning to women and perhaps some of those feminists forgot that the making does something positive for the maker. At any rate, I know that knitting keeps me sane some days in ways that little else besides hiking lots of miles does. Tapestry weaving is my passion, and as such I am emotionally invested in making something that I truly believe is art, and so though the weaving can be relaxing if I get in a rhythm, it still holds some tension for me psychologically.
Knitting has no such hold over me. I really couldn't care less most of the time if I mess it up. A baby hat that is a little lopsided can still keep a kids head warm, though art, I'd say, it definitely is not.
I have thought more about the June Wayne blog post I wrote last and about how June in her essay in the Art Institute of Chicago catalog was trying to say that tapestry was something different than fiber art, and I still wonder about this. IS tapestry something that isn't quite fiber art? I am fascinated by much of the fiber art that is out there. I am interested in seeing current fiber art whether it be the sculptures of Sarah Hewitt or the bead art of Jennifer Schu, or Iviva Olenick's embroidery shown on her blog, Were I so Besotted. (For some reason those were the three I thought of first. I could have named a million others, and I never never exaggerate.) Thoughts on this? Is tapestry different than what we generally label fiber art because it is perhaps better able to portray an image? Does that make it more like painting for example?
I found a new yarn store in Santa Fe that I had never gone to before. This place has been on my radar for a few years as it is for sale and I have wished I could buy it, not to sell yarn but to have as a studio and home. Unfortunately, I don't have an extra two million lying around (it is not far from the plaza and prices in Santa Fe go down depending on how many feet you are from the Palace of the Governors). If anyone wants to be a patron to a great committed tapestry artist and does have a couple extra million to bandy about, please let me know!
Miriam's Well (Emily thought for years that the place was named for the owner, Miriam Swell... perhaps I don't articulate well) has a great location on Paseo de Peralta, but the entrance is in the back of the building and you have to take a circuitous route through a couple alleys to find it. Never fear, there are signs.
I believe the Santa Fe School of Weaving used to have a lot of looms, but now it is primarily a knitting shop. When she found out I was a tapestry weaver, the delightful owner Miriam Leth-Espensen showed me the beautiful churro from Los Ojos she is carrying now. It is sensational stuff. I have a stash of churro already though and had to leave this bit behind. I was sorely tempted by many beautiful knitting yarns at this place, but my knitting yarn stash is literally busting out of the storage spaces I have been allotted for this kind of thing. I can't cram any more in until I knit some up and get it out of the queue. Miriam learned weaving in Denmark from two Bauhaus teachers and moved to Santa Fe 25 years ago from Vermont. Maybe she'll adopt me and give me the place for my winning smile.
In a stash-emptying move (who am I kidding, there will always be more yarn) one project I finished this week was this Lace Blanket from 60 More Quick Baby Knits. This blanket gave me a run for my money. There were errata and I didn't realize it until I had ripped out the border several times. Even after seeing the errata I had trouble getting it right. Eventually I did what all of us are forced to do from time to time lest we be tempted to rip out the whole thing; I fudged it. And it came out okay. As Emily so pointedly made me realize, it is just going to get covered with baby spit-up anyway, so what does it matter if the corners aren't perfect? Perhaps she has a point.
So we can probably agree that following a pattern for a baby blanket from a pattern (and check for the errata before you start a project like this for goodness sake!) is probably not fiber art. But what really is? Or does it really matter that much? Perhaps art can be anything that is engaging and makes us think. Let me get some knitting needles while I ponder that.
I took a trip down to Santa Fe Saturday to hear a talk about
the two solo shows at David Richard Gallery:June Wayne The Tapestries: Forces of Nature and Beyondand Judy Chicago: Woven and Stitched. The
primary speakers were Elissa Auther, Associate Professor of Contemporary Art at
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and Janet Koplos, a New York
City-based art critic, writer and contributing editor for Art in America. David
Eichholtz, the curator at David Richard Gallery, gave a great introduction of
the artists and mediated the discussion. Judy Chicago herself was in the
audience and gave a lot of feedback about her work.
I read Elissa Auther’s book (String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art)
a little more than a year ago as part of an American Tapestry Alliance study
forum I participated in about increasing the visibility of tapestry in
contemporary fine art. I reviewed the parts of the book about Judy Chicago and
Auther’s conclusion before going to the lecture. I very much expected to hear a
talk connecting the ideas in the book about history of fiber art and its place
in contemporary fine art to contemporary tapestry art. We were, after all,
sitting in a gallery full of large contemporary tapestries. Unfortunately,
there was almost no mention of tapestry at all from either Koplos or Auther in their talks.
I purchased the catalog from The Art Institute of Chicago’s show of June Wayne’s tapestries in 2010-2011. At this point June was still alive and
she wrote a short essay for the catalog. June is best known for her lithography
and New Mexicans might recognize the name Tamarind Lithography Workshop which
is now housed at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. For four years
from 1970 to 1974, June focused on creating 12 large-scale tapestries, 11 of
which were realized. All are currently exhibited at David Richard Gallery.
Here is a quote from the beginning of June Wayne’s catalog
essay entitled, “Sufficient Unto Each Day is the Myopia Thereof.”
In 1973 the International Biennial of Tapestry in Lausanne,
Switzerland, rejected one of my tapestries. Mildred Constantine, the curator of
design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the chairman of the Lausanne
jury, told my Paris dealer that Lame de
Choc was “too old-fashioned to show alongside fiber art.” Over the years I
have ruminated about the differences between fiber art and tapestry and have
come to believe that they are conceptual opposites, although they share the
rubric of textiles.
In the 1960s fiber art literally “jumped over the convent
wall” into mainstream aesthetics, distinguishing itself from tapestry by the
adoption of “fiber” as its key word, which it had a genuine (and practical)
need to do. Semantically and factually, tapestry had become a misleading label
for the new directions that were being taken in weaving by artists who paired
themselves with painting, graphics, collage, assemblage, and all the other
artistic subsets that gave the ‘60s its reputation for freedom of expression….
But my art had an agenda that did not fit the goals of fiber. I needed and
wanted tapestry techniques whose methodology echoed both benday dots and
computer grids, just as it offered me a type of image making through the
accretion of modules that I had found in the pores of lithograph stones….
I found it more than a little ironic following this quote
and given the fact that the talk was in a gallery stuffed with huge tapestries,
that the lecturers did not show one slide of a tapestry, did not talk about
June’s tapestries, and that the entire talk was centered around the fiber art
of which June says her tapestries had nothing to do with.
Here are some quotes and highlights from the talk. There was
a lot said about Judy Chicago’s work. I was excited to hear more about her
history and work while looking at one of her tapestries (The Creation). I also
appreciated hearing Judy speak a little bit about her career as an artist. (There is a lot of information out there about Judy Chicago and I will leave it to you to research her show.) I
heard far less about June Wayne’s work.
Janet Koplos at the very end of her 20 minute talk and the only mention of tapestry by either speaker until the question period:
Tapestry, the technique central to the two bodies of work that brought us here
today, have somewhat more relation to drawing and painting and thus more easily
accommodate specific statements of meaning. It seems that people trained in
fiber often looked for ways to work beyond the expectations of that material
while people trained in other mediums and techniques looked at fiber and saw
the emotional, tactile, and associational values of fiber and use that toward
ends that may be also present in their other work such as painting or printing.
Interestingly the same thing seems to be happening in clay today…. and it is a
reminder that there is never just one approach and even a single medium that
can have many facets, it all depends on the ideas and the impulses of the
artist.
At the end of the two talks, there was a period for
questions. It was clear that the gallery had a large number of fans of Judy
Chicago which was not unexpected since the creator of The Dinner Party (and
many other famous works of art) was sitting among us, and she does live in New
Mexico after all. We were an hour and a half into this experience and I had yet
to hear anything substantial about tapestry from anyone except David Eichholtz, the gallery
owner and curator who introduced June Wayne’s work at the beginning and the
brief statement Koplos made at the end of her talk. So I stood up and asked
Koplos and Auther what they thought the connection was between the issues of
fiber art’s place in modern art to contemporary art tapestry production. The
answer from Janet Koplos was that there isn’t anyone doing contemporary
tapestry art any more. This was stunning to me. I sat down with my head
spinning… and then all the things the ATA forum I participated in last year rushed back
to me and all I could think was that these are the current scholars and
curators of fiber art and even they don’t know what we do. Or rather, they know
what we do, but they don’t think anyone of consequence does it any more. Here is the exact conversation.
Rebecca: I am just
wondering if you have any comments about contemporary tapestry in relation to
the development of fiber art and its place in the art world today.
Koplos: I think in the art world today there is a place for
absolutely anything anybody wants to do. I don’t think there is any limit on
it. But the real movement in tapestry, the attention to tapestry, came with the
Lausanne Bienniale in the 60s and lots of artists were paying attention to it
then but not to the degree that these two women were. You know, they were just
somebody who did a cartoon and handed it over to somebody and it was executed
by another person, so it was a superficial engagement. But there was engagement
with the thing. And now… [she trails off and Auther picks up]
Auther: The only way I can answer that is I went to the
recent College Art Association meeting in New York which is the big
interdisciplinary conference that artists and art historians come to. I noticed
there was a panel on tapestry and I thought that was really fascinating, but as
I looked at the individual papers as the conference came closer, it was really
really stuck in 17th and 18th century. And I still feel
like scholarship is … there is not the scholarly interest in contemporary
tapestry that there should be.
David Eichholtz talked some about the use of digital weaving
done by people like Chuck Close and Robert Indiana and questioned the
differences between this kind of weaving and the one-of-a-kind hand weaving
that created June Wayne’s tapestries. And then Eichholtz mentioned a digital
weaving studio in Belgium.
Audience member: A very well known artist in California
these days is a woman named Pae White who does the thing with Brussel’s
tapestries and she creates immense installations with Brussel tapestries. [...]
Auther: I am glad you brought up Pae White because it just
occurred to me that yeah, she is probably the only contemporary artist I know
that is doing large scale tapestry where she initiates the process and she is
showing in museums that are exclusively devoted to contemporary art. I saw a
series of her works in the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and also I saw
a series at SITE [Santa Fe], that must have been two years ago I think?
Audience member: They are knock-outs.
Auther: They are huge and they are
really interesting and I have never had a chance to talk to her about the
motivations or why she is going into that realm but before that time she worked
generally I think with a great interest in fiber and craft traditions.
Unfortunately, Christa Thurman, Chair of Textiles at The Art
Institute of Chicago was not able to make it to the lecture as originally
planned due to a personal emergency. I would have loved to hear what she had to
say. David Richard Gallery has some interviews planned with her and promises to
post a series of podcasts and videos with all this information including the
talk I heard online. I look forward to Christa’s response to my question.
David Richard Gallery did an
excellent job getting these speakers and I appreciated the well-attended event.
The owners of the gallery were engaging, knowledgeable, and seemed
exceptionally supportive of tapestry. I want to thank them for hosting this
beautiful show and I hope they will consider showing contemporary art tapestry
again in the near future.
Please visit David Richard Gallery's website and look at the June Wayne tapestries. Or better yet, if you can, go see the show. The tapestries are very large and several of them were stunning. They were woven by three different French studios in the early '70s. My favorite two are The Fifth Wave and Verdict. The Fifth Wave (Cinquieme Vague) was inspired by one of her lithographs, Wave Five. The background consists of irregular blocks that look like they are full of a design from tree rings. I love the color gradation use in this piece. Verdict is 73 by 117 inches and was woven by Giselle Glaudin-Brivet at Atelier Giselle Glaudin-Brivet, Aubusson. The imagery in this piece is also based on Wayne's lithographs and contains references to DNA molecules and mountains. She uses two different warp setts in this piece, adding spots of color through much of it with a double sett.
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For more information:
Here is a video of Elissa Auther speaking about her book, String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art.
Here is a link to a series of photos of Pae White's Untitled, Still from the Whitney Biennial in 2010, a massive "tapestry". I am unable to find much information about her fiber works online but can only assume that these large pieces are digitally produced, possibly in Belgium as people in the talk suggested. This work is what Elissa Auther thought of when talking of contemporary tapestry.
Pae White, Untitled, Still; Whitney Biennial 2010
David Richard Gallery has a series of videos posted on their website. They have a few of June Wayne talking about her work. Here is one of them:
Cinquieme Vague, June Wayne, 86 x 78 inches, Tapestry, 1972
